Another key player in the Jacmel region is Pastor Andrenord Joseph, the pastor of the Timouaj church where we worshipped. He also traveled with us to a couple of the other churches. He is the regional leader of the Jacmel churches. He was discipled into pastoral leadership by Pastor Elihu so they have a long deep connection.

In two of the churches we met young leaders who had obvious leadership calling and potential. In Lamontay the lead pastor was out of the country so many of our questions were ably answered by a young teacher who made his way up the mountain every Saturday and Sunday by motorcycle to help out with the ministry. His name is Pierre Emmanuel and we saw in him a bright future for Lamontay. We had the privilege of giving him a ride down the mountain after our meeting and connecting with him more.

In the other mountain church, Mowo, we also met a young leader named Etienne Belour. We made it clear to him as well that we anticipate hearing his input into the future of that community as it was obvious that he has both the passion and potential to grow in his leadership of that community. One of the challenges for all the churches is keeping young leaders around and so investing in these younger guys seems like an important step.

Troy on leftside of Monique and Jackson on right side

Finally, we met Troy and Jackson at the Sous Espwa offices. They gave us orientation to how our denominational work interacts in Haiti. The basic theme was “we want to empower Haitians to renew Haiti.

The only non-Haitian we connected with was Zach King, and I won’t tell you too much about him since he is on his way out of Haiti. Assuming Synod approves him, he will be the head of the new combined Mission agency. We look forward to working with Zach’s successor in Haiti.

We were glad to meet and experience so many capable people on our trip. It was our impression that each of then shared our desire for a healthy partnership and all were willing to be patient in building the foundation of that relationship.